JESS DU JOUR: AN ITSY-BITSY, TEENIE-WEENIE, BLACK-AND-WHITE STRIPED BIKINI

I am hungry. A cheeseburger or two, or twelve, would taste really scrumptious right now. I could just cruise into town, waltz into McDonald's, and nonchalantly order twelve cheeseburgers.

In fact, I know someone who works there. I'm sure that if I told him I had been starving myself so I could fit into a small black-and-white bikini, he would just lop a few burgers off the top of the grill and stuff them into a "to-go" bag for me for free. But alas, I cannot.

It is springtime once again. Birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and love occupies the minds of young men. Young ladies like me, however, are out shopping for new bathing suits.

This spring, I have already cleared one hurdle-- I have a bathing suit. It contains approximately enough black-and-white material to make a picnic blanket for a small family of ants.

Now, I must find a way to squeeze my slightly-larger-than-last-summer body into the zebra-striped Bikini from the Underworld that fit me a mere eight months ago. This can be a more formidable task than one may think.

Even when I am thin, sporting a bikini is not my idea of a "bunch-o-fun". In fact, I would not even place bikini-wearing in the "big clump-o-fun" category. One's natural body features are redesigned; pinched and squeezed into an unnatural, disporportional image of "ideal" beauty.

Women prance along the beaches, giggling and tossing their hair, as if their internal organs ENJOYED being compressed into astronaut food. But I cannot criticize too harshly -- at some point, I too will surrender to the beauty myth gods and suck in my belly.

But even though I may shun a few cheeseburgers to fit into my suit (something I should do anyway), I refuse to bake my body in a tanning bed.

I would rather shave my armpits with a meat cleaver than to submit my skin to the horrors of a tan shop. Especially when I see some of my artficially beige friends at school:

"Uhh, Jen-Jen, can I ask you a personal question?"

"Yeah Jess, anything."

"Exactly why are your eyelids so brown and crusty, and why is your nose flaking off onto my lab table?"

No thank you. I believe I will wait until July for my tan. And when we are lying on the beach 20 years from now and they ask me to slather more anti-wrinkle cream on their shriveled carcasses, I will scoff at their pleated bellies.

No thank you again. In fact, I think I will have that cheeseburger. For now, I will have to be content with my slightly overweight, cream-colored self until I am motivated to exercise. This will be some time in late June. Until then, as John Lennon once said, he is the eggman, they are the eggmen, and I am the walrus... or at least I look like one in my bikini. Koo-koo ka choo.

Jessica McCuan is editor of the Jackson High School student newspaper, the Squawler.